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Wednesday, 16 March 2016

ISIS and Germany

Islamic
State Closing In On Germany

Hans-Georg
Maaßen, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV),
warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists
among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number
of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from
7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.

"Salafists
want to establish an Islamic state in Germany." — Hans-Georg
Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.

More
than 800 German residents -- 60% of whom are German passport holders
-- have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these,
roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal
Police Office.

Up
to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after
obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East.
— Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

A
15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and seriously
wounded a police officer in Hanover. The stabbing appears to be the
first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic
State.

The
incident occurred at
the main train station in Hanover on the afternoon of February 26,
when two police officers noticed that the girl — identified only as
Safia S. — was observing and following them.

The
officers approached the girl, who was wearing an Islamic headscarf,
and asked her to present her identification papers. After handing
over her ID, she stabbed one of the officers in the neck with a
six-centimeter kitchen knife.

According
to police, the attack happened so quickly that the 34-year-old
officer, who was rushed to the hospital, was unable to defend
himself. After her arrest, police found that Safia was also carrying
a second, larger knife.

"The
perpetrator did not display any emotion," a police
spokesperson said.
"Her only concern was for her headscarf. She was concerned that
her headscarf be put back on properly after she was arrested. Whether
the police officer survived, she did not are."

On
March 3, Hanover Public Prosecutor Thomas Klinge revealed that
Safia had travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015 to
join the Islamic State, but that her mother had persuaded her to
return to Germany on January 28.

Last month, Safia S.,
a 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent, stabbed and
seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover, in what appears to
be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by
the Islamic State.

According
to police, the stabbing was premeditated:
unable to join the Islamic State in Syria, Safia had determined to
carry out an attack against the police in Germany.

Safia
is being charged with attempted murder. She is also being charged
with a terrorism offense. According to prosecutors, by travelling to
Turkey to join the Islamic State, the girl violated Section
89a of the German Criminal Code, "Preparation of a serious
violent offense endangering the state."

The
newspaper, Die
Welt, reported that
Safia had been part of the local Salafist scene since 2008 — she
was only seven years old at the time. She had appeared in Islamist
propaganda videos alongside Pierre Vogel, a convert to Islam and one
of the best-known Salafist preachers in Germany. In those videos,
Vogel praised Safia for wearing a headscarf to school and for being
able to recite verses from the Korn.

Safia's
brother, Saleh, is reportedly being held in a jail in Turkey, where
he was arrested for
trying to join the Islamic State.

Until
now, the only other successful Islamist attack in Germany took place
at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011, when Arid Uka, an ethnic Albanian
from Kosovo, shot and killed two United States airmen and seriously
wounded two others. Uka was later sentenced to
life in prison.

On
February 4, 2016, German
police arrested four
members of an ISIS cell allegedly planning jihadist attacks in
Berlin. In coordinated raids, more than 450 police searched homes and
businesses linked to the cell in Berlin, Lower Saxony and North
Rhine-Westphalia.

The
ringleader — a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying at a refugee
shelter with his wife and two children in Attendorn — arrived in
Germany in the fall of 2015. Posing as an asylum seeker from Syria,
the Algerian,identified only
as Farid A., is said to have received military training with the
Islamic State in Syria.

Also
arrested were: a 49-year-old Algerian living in Berlin under a fake
French identity; a 30-year-old Algerian living in Berlin with a valid
residence permit; and a 26-year-old Algerian, allegedly with ties to
Islamists in Belgium, who is living in a refugee shelter in Hanover.

The
men allegedly were planning to attack Checkpoint Charlie, the iconic
Cold War crossing point between East and West Berlin. They also
allegedly were planning to attack the Alexanderplatz, a large public
square and transportation hub in the center of Berlin.

On
February 8, German
police arrested an
alleged ISIS commander who was living at a refugee shelter in the
small town of Sankt Johann. The 32-year-old jihadist, known only as
Bassam and posing as a Syrian asylum seeker, had entered Germany in
the fall of 2015. German intelligence authorities were unaware of the
man's true identity until the German newsmagazine, Der
Spiegel,
interviewed him after receiving a tip from other Syrians at the
shelter. Bassam said the accusations against him are false: "I
want to learn German and work as a cook," he said.

In
a February 5 interview with
ZDF television, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany's domestic
intelligence agency (Bundesamt
für Verfassungsschutz, BfV),
warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists
among the refugees flowing into Europe. "The terror risk is very
high," he said.

On
February 4, the Berliner
Zeitungquoted Maaßen
as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 warnings that there
were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently living in
Germany. Some of the jihadists are known to have entered Germany
using fake or stolen passports.

Maaßen
also revealed that
the BfV knows of 230 attempts by Salafists to canvass German refugee
shelters in search of new recruits. In a recent interview with
the Berlin newspaper, Der
Tagesspiegel,
Maaßen said that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to
7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014; 5,500 in 2013; 4,500 in 2012,
and 3,800 in 2011.

Although
Salafists make up only a small fraction of the estimated six million
Muslims living in Germany today, intelligence officials warn that
most of those attracted to Salafi ideology are impressionable young
Muslims who, at a moment's notice, are willing to carry out terrorist
acts in the name of Islam.

In
an annual report, the BfV described Salafism as the "most
dynamic Islamist movement in Germany." Itadded:

"The
absolutist nature of Salafism contradicts significant parts of the
German constitutional order. Specifically, Salafism rejects the
democratic principles of separation of state and religion, popular
sovereignty, religious and sexual self-determination, gender equality
and the fundamental right to physical integrity."

In
an interview with the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung,
Maaßen warned:
"Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany."

On
February 16, more than 200 German police raided the
homes of 44 Salafists in the northern city state of Bremen. The
Interior Minister of Bremen, Ulrich Mäurer, said he had ordered the
closure of the Islamic Association of Bremen (Islamischen
Fördervereins Bremen)
for the alleged recruiting of jihadists for the Islamic State:

"It
is rather apocalyptic that we have people living in the middle of our
city who are prepared, from one day to the next, to participate
massively in the terror of the Islamic State."

In
December 2014, authorities in Bremen shut
down another
Salafist group, the Culture and Family Association (Kultur-
und Familieverein, KUF),
after some of its members joined the Islamic State.

More
than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders
— have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to Die
Welt, based
on the most recent data compiled by
the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt,
BKA).
Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. Around 130
others have been killed on the battlefield, including at least a
dozen suicide bombers.

In
a February 19 interview with
the Neue
Osnabrücker Zeitung,
the head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said that up to 5,000 European
jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat
experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. He added that
further jihadist attacks in Europe were to be expected:

"Europe
is now facing the greatest terrorist threat in more than ten years.
We expect that ISIS or other Islamist groups will carry out an attack
somewhere in Europe, with the aim of achieving high losses among the
civilian population. In addition, there is the threat posed by
lone-wolf attackers. The growing number of foreign fighters presents
the member states of the EU with completely new challenges."

A
recent poll conducted by YouGov for the news agency, Deutsche Presse
Agentur (DPA), found that 66%
of Germans expect the
Islamic State to carry out a jihadist attack on German soil in
2016. Only
17% of those surveyed believe there will be no attack; 17% said they
did not have an opinion.

Speaking
at a gathering of international police in Berlin on February 25,
Hans-Georg Maaßen, the spy chief,warned that
Germany is not an island: "We
have to assume that we will become the target of jihadist attacks,
and we need to be prepared."

1 comment:

This young lady is neither a hero, nor a muslim. She is attention seeking, and have musunderstood how to get attention on a positive, societally acceptable way. Take away to the mental asylum where she belongs, and free the society from people who tries to set up a majorily peaceful world society of religions against each other. Instead of wasting these few hundred lives every year, and instead of causing these minor damages on property every year, why don't you protesters get a life? Terrorism is neither working, nor is it efficient. If you really want change, then take it upon yourself to work with others in the world society to cause this change. And realize that your own self inflated impression of the damage you are causing, is wildly exaggerated. If you as a terrorist want to see the importance of a single human being, climb a tower and look down. We as humans, even yourself as a terrorist group, are completely insignificant, and while you detonate yourself and others, you stop your own influence, there and then, your spirit will not sit at the right hand of Allah, no, you will be thrown by same Allah in the prisoners den, there will be no 70 virgins for you, because nobody in his right mind would give his daughter to a terrorist. Compare this to a sane person, a bonus pater familia of any religious or non religious observation, who tirelessly works for his family, his community, his country, his fellow human being? Where do you think such a person ends when he dies? In hell? In heaven?